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Congress removed health care reform’s $2,000/$4,000 deductible limits as part of the annual Medicare physician payment bill that President Obama signed on April 1. Section 213 of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 removes deductible limits for small-business health insurance policies from the reform law. Under the original law, small employer health plans […]
How a company complies with health care reform should be determined by what kind of employer it is, how exclusive its workforce is, and how important its benefit package is seen as an aid to recruitment and retention. Only after that analysis should an employer look at whether gains can be made by, say, reducing […]
On Feb. 26, SIIA’s CEO and president Mike Ferguson testified before a House panel to make it clear that skirting the ACA is not the reason companies and institutions self-insure, contrary to what pro-reform elements in the federal government may believe. The decision whether to self-fund is based on risk tolerance, understanding of legal liability, […]
The 7th Circuit in a 2-1 ruling refused to grant a preliminary injunction to Notre Dame University, which would have freed the university from participating in reform’s requirement to provide contraceptives at no cost to all women. In so doing the court criticized the university’s argument that signing an EBSA Form 700 — expressing objections to the contraceptive […]
Generally, waiting periods to enroll in health coverage cannot exceed 90 days, and eligibility conditions based solely on the lapse of a time period are permissible for no more than 90 days, under new final rules issued by the U.S. Departments of Labor Health and Human Services and the Treasury. In addition, the employer has […]
Companies with 50-99 employees that do not offer health insurance to their workers will not be subject to fines for failing to provide coverage until 2016. This gives such mid-sized firms an additional year to prepare health coverage for workers, and that delay adds to the one-year delay in enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s […]
In proposed rules issued Jan. 27, the IRS clarifies how participants in employer-sponsored plans are to count employer contributions to HRAs and wellness program incentives when calculating their contributions to employer-sponsored coverage. In those rules, the IRS also allows temporary exceptions to health care reform’s definition of minimum essential coverage for government-sponsored limited-benefit plans, giving […]
On Jan. 15, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that the IRS can issue premium tax credits (under the Affordable Care Act) to individuals whether they enrolled for coverage through a federally or state-run health insurance exchange. The complaint was brought by three employers and four individuals, including Jacqueline Halbig, who […]
A series of agency Q&As resolves a few questions relating to complying with federal health care reform, such as correctly counting participants’ out-of-pocket expenditures; wellness program reward administration; and the status of “carved-out” benefits. In latest set of Frequently Asked Questions, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Treasury provide some […]
Employee assistance programs and certain “limited wraparound coverage” would be added to the set of “limited excepted benefits” exempt from most of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, under proposed rules in the Dec. 24 Federal Register (78 Fed. Reg. 77632). The proposal also would make it easier for dental and vision benefits to […]